UK Subs Bookshelf

2011

9 October: Update on Jamie Oliver and his other band Sci-Fi Mafia

T&M update on Jamie's other band Sci-Fi Mafia

Check out this new video for Jamie Oliver's 'other' band Sci-Fi Mafia.

Sci-Fi Mafia's 'Second Chance' - shot at the album launch by Tpak Productions...

The following review of Sci-Fi Mafia's album launch was published in the local press:

SCI-FI MAFIA AT QUEENS HALL, NUNEATON, FRIDAY AUGUST 19.

INTIMATE venues in provincial towns aren’t supposed to play host to gigs like this.Intimate venues in provincial towns are supposed to play host to indie wannabes, straining to look cool and hard and singing in faux regional accents.Or earnest rock covers bands, knocking out Born to be Wild, and refusing to give up the ghost.But not gigs like that provided by Sci-Fi Mafia on Friday, August 19 at Queens Hall in Nuneaton.With a psychotic and manic MC introducing the audience of “freaks and fiends” to their world of dark and delicious horrors, Sci-Fi Mafia served up a carnival of bizarre delights.The raucous, relentless music, electro-goth, industrial metal – call it what you will. It sounds like it comes from another world – catchy yet challenging, melodic yet discordant. Like Sigue Sigue Sputnik gone right.Squalling guitars from Chez, Rhythms and glorious noise from John Bambury on keys, sledge-hammer drums at machine gun pace from UK Subs erstwhile drummer Jamie Oliver.And the weird, howling vocal of Viney, selling every song with a voice like Brett Anderson’s considerably more evil twin .All of this delivered as the freaks from Warwickshire entertainments agency Area 51 took the visual aspects of live performance to a whole new level.Giant robots glowing, gorgeous girls dancing, even more gorgeous girls on stilts infiltrating the audience, angle grinders showering the stage in spectacular sparks – it was all there and it all combined to make something really rather marvellous.This gig wasn’t about poseurs in sunglasses staring down an audience. It wasn’t about serious young guitar slingers gazing at their serious shoes.This was blistering in its intensity, sinister and gothic yet illuminated by an effervescent rush of unadulterated fun.It was an experience. It was entertainment.It was Sci-Fi Mafia live in their home town.And the bar has been raised.